Homebrew Recipe: Chop Down Wheat Forest

Chop Down Wheat Forest

A few football seasons ago, Down the Hall and Hacksaw teamed up to create some homebrews for consumption during tailgating of NC State games. We jokingly called ourselves Carter-Finley Brewing after the NC State stadium name. While the attendance at our tailgating parties wasn’t great - we had a ton of fun putting together recipes and theming them around the opponents. This particular brew was for the Wake Forest matchup which happens to be where Mrs. Hacksaw’s sports loyalties truly lie. The goal of this beer was to make a classic hefeweizen that could be morphed into a blue moon with the addition of a fresh orange.

Recipe

Grain Bill

6.6 lbs Wheat LME

1 lb Extra Light DME

1 lb Crystal 10

½ lb Flaked Oats

Hop Schedule

(60) - 1 oz Nugget

(15) - 1 oz Cascade

(5) - 1 oz Cascade

Yeast

1 vial WLP 320 American Hefeweizen

Boil Volume – 2.5 Gallons

Fermentor Volume – 5.25 gallons

OG – Where did

FG – I put

ABV – Those numbers?

Procedure: Heated up water to 157 and then added the grains. Tried to do a mini-mash by holding temperature around 155 for an hour, but with my enamel pot and towel setup I didn’t do the best job there. Added half the LME after reaching boil and then followed hop schedule and added remainder of LME and the DME at 15 minutes. Cooled in sink with icebath below 90 and then transferred to primary fermentor and pitched yeast.

Fermentation/ Packaging – Fermented for about 2 weeks in the primary – as a hefe there was no need to transfer to secondary. Bottled this beer using 5/8 cup table sugar

Tasting Notes – A very classic hefeweizen with banana and clove notes shining through strongly. Per the plan with an orange was dropped it suddenly became Blue Moon impersonator although with more complexity.

Improvement/Tweak Ideas – Would love to see this exact same recipe but with a clean American dry yeast  or a California common yeast to compare and see just how much the yeast contributes to the flavor of the beer.